Sociology: Explanations of Crime sample essay

Human beings have always been a major subject for studying in all the possible dimensions. Anything related to this question has been of a great interest for us since the appearance of society. As the necessity of examining the universe and learning its construction appeared, the scientists faced the need to explore and study the inner world of human as well. The studies related to what is inside human minds turned to be even of more complexity and scope than it was previously expected. They appeared to pose the same depth for research as the sciences concerning space and the world around us. But the most challenging subject to study was interaction of what is both inside and outside human beings minds and how it affects one another. The ways we behave within particular circumstances, the ways different groups of people interact with other ones, the reasons and results of various actions of humans, the reflection of major issues on the individual behavior, the different ways people act in various situations – these issues have interested scientists seriously. As the society evolved the need for studying all of these questions became soundly topical. Therefore the society itself, the relevant problems faced by it, the questions concerning society and individual’s behavior within it posed a subject for a deep research. Hence the appearance of the appropriate sciences which are able to define and explain the issues of social life. The main one among these disciplines that covers most of the topics described above is Sociology.

Sociology is rather young science. As the independent academic discipline it was officially born in the nineteenth century and was named as Sociology in the year eighteen thirty eight by the outstanding scientist of that period Auguste Comte. Initially the study of sociology has presented a combination of sciences related to humankind such as history, economics, psychology, philosophy, theology, and some others. Since then the sociological study has developed soundly with a help of deep and serious researches. Due to contribution of many outstanding scientists of different periods who represented various schools the sociology evolved to pose the relevant integral science. Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Ferdinand Toennies, Vilfredo Pareto, Wilhelm Dilthey, Heinrich Rickert, Karl Marx have done their bits in development of this science by founding basic sociological theories and approaches that are still useful nowadays.

Sociology studies the life of society and everything that occurs within society. The individual social lives of particular humans, the different social groups formed by individuals, the institutions related to social life, various kinds of societies, all kinds of social processes, and interaction and influence of all these issues mentioned are the subjects included in the sociological studies. Therefore sociology has recently become a very relevant study and it is turning to be more and more vital with the time.

Modern sociological discipline can be applied in both theoretical and practical ways. The different theoretical studies of sociological science help understand the behavior of human beings as the social beings. With the help of practical methodologies and approaches of sociological discipline many of various social problems may be defined, analyzed, explained and solved. Thus, any event that occurs within the social environment around people can be explained from the standpoint of sociology. Therefore this relevant science intersects with many other vitally important disciplines. The interaction with adjoining sciences may be so deep that it is sometimes hard to distinguish the border between them. Because sociology as an academic discipline has evolved from the combination of several sciences and includes various aspects of life it is considered to be rather universal and applicable to a great number of different issues in a very flexible way. Thus sociologists usually are specialists in more than one discipline and very often even in several ones. The sociological science itself is also divided to many fields and subfields in accordance to the field of application. However the main subjects of study in sociology remain the same, such as behavior and relations of people within particular social groups and institutions, psychological and anthropological aspects of social lives, family and gender relationships, political sphere, and many other social problems. For instance, medical sociology studies the aspects mentioned above within from the standpoint of medical disciplines, public sociology explores them in accordance to public society, urban or rural sociologies examine these questions within the appropriate area, sociology of religion studies them in accordance to particular religion, and so forth. There exist a great number of branches of sociology naturally or artificially developed from the main discipline with the time. One of them is Criminology.

Criminology is rather new discipline that has evolved from the initial basic sociological science. Criminology studies criminal behavior and crime itself as a social phenomenon. Together with many other occurrences of social life crime, its kinds, its causes and criminal behavior may be determined by many factors. Criminology studies these factors from the standpoint of sociology. Subsequently criminology consists of minor studies and may be divided as well for several fields.

Crime itself may be described and explained in many different ways according to the discipline. Jurisprudence, criminal law, psychology, political science, forensic and detective studies, along with sociology and criminology examine and explain crime and criminal behavior from the appropriate points. However crime itself still remains the same and the essence of it does not change. With simple words crime is the action that violates criminal law by human beings. Sociology of deviance is also related to criminology and studies the similar subject of violating cultural norms.

Thus any matters related to criminal or deviant behavior of individuals in society are studied by criminology and sociology of deviance. The construction and the structure of crime in particular and of any deviance in general is rather complex and demands careful examining in order to study the subject deeply. As it was already mentioned above the topic of both criminal and deviant behavior from the standpoint of sociology has a meaning distinct from the other disciplines. However even within studies of the same science the meanings of one subject may also vary significantly according to different theories and approaches described by representatives of various schools. As for in the present paper we are studying the topic of crime construction in sociological aspect we have to concentrate on the approaches of the existing theories within modern sociological science and try to apply them to the subject. Therefore let us focus now on the major theories of sociology as an academic science.

Interactionism is one of the basic theories of sociology. The founder of this perspective is considered to be George Herbert Mead, an American sociologist. Thus Interactionism is related to American school of sociology as for the most serious development it has gained in the United States of America by the local scientists. Erving Goffman for instance has developed and improved the existed approaches in interactionism and has contributed significantly in the modern sociological theory. With simple words the essence of interactionism may be described as a field of sociology that studies and analyzes processes and phenomena of the social interaction. Thus the social interaction is the basis of interactionism theory. Because social interaction is tightly connected with a process of communication this concept involves two or more individuals that act with some certain effect on one another. The face-to-face interaction between people includes many different aspects such as mannerisms and all languages that have to be considered while analyzing process of interaction. A communication process is an exchange of information. The importance of control of one individual over another within the communicational process is a relevant issue from the standpoint of interactionism. Some key points that make the field of interactionism so important are the concepts of so-called social role and presentation of self. Interactionism consists of several fields. They are ethnomethodology, phenomenology, and symbolic interactionism or social psychology. The symbolic interactionism is a sub-field of interactionism that studies the personal attitudes of individuals that influence their behavior. With other words it can be described that symbolic interactionism studies the interrelation between so-called subjective meanings and objective actions of individuals and groups involved in the process of communication. The subsequent effects of this interrelation on their behavior pose the main subject of research within the symbolic interactionism approach of sociology. Along with George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman the list of predecessors of the symbolic interactionism include Herbert Blumer whose contribution to the development of sociology is impossible to overestimate. The studies of causes and reasons of social behavior of human beings as the social beings and their relationships and actions toward each other were rather controversial over the time though recently it has turned to be more whole. Symbolic interactionism implies that any features of human behavior may only be explained in the context of social interaction. According to the theory of symbolic interactionism within social psychology the theory of context plays a significant role and states that context is a key element of any social interaction.

As any social action involves participants, includes its cause-and-result boundaries it is necessary to realize how the context of social action is constructed. There are several models of social interaction that describe this subject from different criteria. One of the most functional models of human social action is so-called unit act. It was created by the American sociologist Talcott Parsons and was improved later by his student Robert Merton. In this model any event is seen as a goal-directed social action and includes several necessary elements which are the following. The agent is the person that performs an action. The goal is the desired aim that agents wish to reach. The situation is the state of circumstances at the moment of time when the action occurs. And finally understanding both normative and situational backgrounds of a social action performed by individuals or groups towards others is an important part of analyzing a structure of social interaction. The subject of our project is the crime as a social action. Thus we can build a social interaction model for it as well as for any other social action including deviance. If using the social-psychological model unit act described above the action performed is a crime. The agent that performs a present action is a criminal. The goal according to the present model is presented by desire to get some profit from an action. Depending on the sort of a crime the profit and subsequently the goal may be drastically different. For instance in case of rape the profit is gaining sexual satisfaction, in case of fight it is to get some moral satisfaction of manifesting aggression, or in case of theft the goal is to misappropriate some valuables. The situational and normative backgrounds of the social action when the crime occurs may vary significantly, and these backgrounds influence soundly on the situation when the crime is committed. Therefore according to this model of social interaction we are able to see that the crime is a result of criminal behavior and depends on the normative and situational background.

Thus as we know model of social interaction we can trace now the major factors in a context of social psychology. There exist two groups of them both equally important for understanding the symbolic interactionism theory of sociology. First group consists of objective factors. In order to explain the objective factors in context of interactionism or social psychology Latane, Jackson, and Sedikides have constructed a model of so-called communication-persuasion paradigm. It describes these objective factors as following. The source (the person influencing others), the target (the person influenced by the source), the message (what exactly source is trying to persuade the target), the channel (the way the message is delivered by the source to the target), the impact (the way the target reacts to the message of the source). However the presence of all the objective factors in the context of social interaction is not enough for successful overall explanation of every action of humans as the social beings. The important elements in the symbolic interactionism are the subjective factors in context of social interaction. This group of factors includes the ones the actor (whether a source or a target) perceives subjectively. As it is almost impossible to separate human beings from the society they live in the mutual dependence on one another. Thus, the personal perception of actors within the theory of symbolic interactionism is of great importance for understanding the theory. For instance, the understanding of idea of so-called generalized others and significant others is a necessary part in an attempt to analyze subjectivity of symbolic interactionism.

Bibliography

1. Giddens, Anyhony. (2005). Introduction to Sociology. W.W. Norton & Company.

2. Schaefer, Richard. (2004). Sociology, Ninth Edition. McGraw-Hill Humanities.

3. Hester, Stephen. (1992). A Sociology of Crime. Routledge.

4. Shoham, Giora and Hoffman, John. (1991). A Primer in the sociology of Crime. Harrow & Heston.

5. Moore, Stephen. (1996). Investigating Crime and Deviance (Sociology in Action). HarperCollins Publishers.

6. Goffman, Erving. (1961). Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. MacMillan Pub Co. (reprinted)
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